Search - Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Red Nichols :: New York Jazz in the Roaring Twenties 2

Great band, lousy sound

Thomas Bumbera | Maplewood, NJ USA | 03/15/2007

(2 out of 5 stars)

"In the late 1960s the Biograph label produced two lps' worth of California Ramblers ("Golden Gate Orchestra") sides recorded for Edison. It was great to have them available since Edison's vertical-cut discs could not be played on a standard three-speed phono of the time. Unfortunately, they were not all transferred at the proper speed (some Edison discs were recorded at 80 rpm, many others were recorded closer to 78 rpm, especially after 1926), so the resulting improper pitch deterred from the enjoyment of the great music.



30 years later, those same tired transfers, complete with incorrect pitch and fake echo, have come back to haunt us in digital form. There are other Ramblers/Golden Gate collections out there (Timeless and Document each have fine sets avaialble) with excellent remastering; that's where anyone interested in this music should start. Shame on Biograph."